Gary supports Mandy!

[Fox From The Hudd]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2006/11/05/sfnlin05.xml

Interesting insight from Leicester's favourite son...

 

[Melton Fox]

Brilliant, Brilliant. Great to see a shareholders point of view. Good ol' Gary

Great reading

 

[Scarby]

good article

This has been the season of club takeovers. I can't remember a time in football when there was so much speculation about boardroom moves. Aston Villa started it off with Randy Lerner's takeover. West Ham will announce on Wednesday whether or not Kia Joorabchian will be taking over at Upton Park and rumours continue to circulate about Newcastle, Liverpool and, of course, my team, Leicester City.
Milan Mandaric, the former Portsmouth chairman, has made an opening bid for Leicester, for whom I am a significant shareholder. I think Milan is a good strong candidate and it would be good to see a man like him, with a proven record in English football, coming in to the Walkers Stadium.
I know the club will be speaking to Milan this week and that there are some other parties sniffing around. I hope they can come to some sort of agreement because it looks like being good for the future of the club. A team like Leicester need significant investment in the playing staff to develop.
I have no say in the administrative running of Leicester although I have financial and emotional vested interest. I led a takeover of the club when it had gone bust, getting together a consortium of Leicester people and old friends to try and save my old hometown team.

To a man, everyone in that consortium had the best interests of Leicester City at heart. No one was thinking about making financial gain – I don't think we thought we'd ever see that money again!
That means the shareholders' commitment to the future of Leicester remains: we are not trying to sell to the highest bidder but rather to the man who can do most to take the club to the next level.
Mandaric has a record of putting his own money into Portsmouth which shows you he has a real involvement in the game. He has been around for 20 years, in the States and in England. I have always been impressed with him when we have met – he seems sincere and dedicated.
The only thing we have to ask is whether or not Milan can do a better job than us. I believe that to be the case. We just don't have the kind of money you need to build a team that can challenge for a place in the Premiership.
We came in to try and stabilize a club whose very existence was threatened. We were never looking to be empire builders or to make money. We were honestly trying to do the decent thing and even if we get our money back I'm still proud of everyone who came to the help of the club.
If Mandaric is willing to pay what Leicester City is worth then I think it would work for everyone. I would certainly look to be selling most of my shares – although I'd like to hang on to a few. Leicester are still my team after all.
The situation at Leicester is very different to the takeover saga that has dominated the news down at West Ham. It is encouraging that the club seem to think it will all be settled by Wednesday. I think that will come as a relief to the fans and to Alan Pardew. As for the players, it is always difficult to tell how much this kind of boardroom speculation affects the team.
When I came back from Barcelona to Tottenham in 1990 it was a club that was very unstable at board level. You had to be completely dumb not to realise what was going on. Alan Sugar and Terry Venables ended up taking over from Irving Scholar, and Paul Gascoigne was sold.
They were difficult times in some respects – we won the FA Cup without really knowing what was going to happen to the club.
At a club like Tottenham you know someone is going to come. It's not as if you are playing for a smaller club down the league system where you feel your livelihood might be threatened. That's when it can really get to players. If you have a family and a mortgage you need to know that you are going to still have a job next week.
Often players just focus on the football and it can help galvanise a club. In the darkest days at Leicester the players deferred their wages which went a long way to resolving the short-term problems.
Perhaps in the long run all this foreign investment will be good for the game. I'm certainly no financial expert but if clubs get better stadiums and we see better players on the pitch perhaps it is not a bad thing.
What does worry me though is the basic question – why? Why are so many foreign investors with a background in business suddenly attracted to English football clubs? What if they just as suddenly pull out and leave the clubs in a mess? Of course different investors bring different positives and negatives.
I'm sure Chelsea fans don't begrudge what Roman Abramovich has done for the club. He has invested not just in players but the club has a brand new training ground.
Manchester United fans may be less enamoured of Malcolm Glazer's takeover of their club. The club seems to have been in serious debt. The fickle world of football is not the place to take big risks.
The hardest part of judging these takeovers is that to your average fan, the business world is impenetrable. I don't think I'm alone in being baffled by the complexities involved in the financial side of modern football.
It is far from being a transparent industry anyway but until we know more about exactly who is investing in British football – and why – it will remain a cause of serious disquiet.

 

[Fox From The Hudd]

As the guy that headed up the rescue team it's interesting to note that he never thought he'd get his money back....

 

[Melton Fox]

As the guy that headed up the rescue team it's interesting to note that he never thought he'd get his money back....

That was the most notable thing that I read as well. If he's thinking that, others must be. If they're not, they now might be, or at least be too ashamed to say so

 

[Leigh]

"If Mandaric is willing to pay what Leicester City is worth" was the statement I picked out.

 

[newtonfox]

"we are not trying to sell to the highest bidder but rather to the man who can do most to take the club to the next level"

the 2 other offers are from comapanys or group its not hard to work out is it :icon_lol: :icon_wink

MM will be in for xmas IMO

 

[SwedeFox]

I think this was quite interesting:

"What does worry me though is the basic question – why? Why are so many foreign investors with a background in business suddenly attracted to English football clubs? What if they just as suddenly pull out and leave the clubs in a mess? Of course different investors bring different positives and negatives."

No foreign investor does have a "heart for the club" they taking over, usually they're just want to make money. What if someone gets tired or notice that the English football was not a good place to make money? I don't think they care very much about the fans and such things. We haven't seen that scenario yet, but I think we should be aware of the oppurtunity.

 

[Melton Fox]

"we are not trying to sell to the highest bidder but rather to the man who can do most to take the club to the next level"

the 2 other offers are from comapanys or group its not hard to work out is it :icon_lol: :icon_wink

MM will be in for xmas IMO

Spot on Newts

Much better to have a £25mill investment that will be looked after, then a £40mill investment that is just given to the current bunch of idiots.

It's not about the qty of money, it's about how well it is used. I believe MM can make £25 mill work better for the club than another "investor" could a larger amount.

 

[bocadillo]

"If Mandaric is willing to pay what Leicester City is worth" was the statement I picked out.

"The only thing we have to ask is whether or not Milan can do a better job than us. I believe that to be the case", was the statement that I picked out and the statement IMHO that should be picked out by anybody who loves the club. If any shareholder does not ask himself that same question and that question only, he is not in it for his love of the club.

 

[fox58]

"The only thing we have to ask is whether or not Milan can do a better job than us. I believe that to be the case", was the statement that I picked out and the statement IMHO that should be picked out by anybody who loves the club. If any shareholder does not ask himself that same question and that question only, he is not in it for his love of the club.

Spot on Boc
let them hold their heads in shame if they don't

 

[NN Fox]

At last, somebody I think I can trust saying something that makes some sense. The key phrases I think are, "we are not trying to sell to the highest bidder but rather to the man who can do most to take the club to the next level." and "The only thing we have to ask is whether or not Milan can do a better job than us. I believe that to be the case."

If MM can persuade the likes of Gary that he has the long term interest of LCFC at heart then I'll feel a whole lot happier.

 

[Melton Fox]

If MM can persuade the likes of Gary that he has the long term interest of LCFC at heart then I'll feel a whole lot happier.

Likewise, but the things that concern me are:

Gary genuinely cares about the future of Leicester city with or without him, do they?

Gary isn't overly concerned about the return on his investment, he considers his investment to have worked hard for the club as opposed to his own bank balance. In a nutshell, a resounding success, do they also think like this?

 

[NN Fox]

Likewise, but the things that concern me are:

Gary genuinely cares about the future of Leicester city with or without him, do they?

Gary isn't overly concerned about the return on his investment, he considers his investment to have worked hard for the club as opposed to his own bank balance. In a nutshell, a resounding success, do they also think like this?

"To a man, everyone in that consortium had the best interests of Leicester City at heart. No one was thinking about making financial gain – I don't think we thought we'd ever see that money again!"

I hope that this means the other shareholders think like Gary and don't just take the money and run.

 

[Melton Fox]

"To a man, everyone in that consortium had the best interests of Leicester City at heart. No one was thinking about making financial gain – I don't think we thought we'd ever see that money again!"

I hope that this means the other shareholders think like Gary and don't just take the money and run.

But it's the power hungry and the status seekers that scare me

 

[NN Fox]

But it's the power hungry and the status seekers that scare me

I know; those 'inner circles' are everywhere.

 

[Leesoh]

Fair play to St Gary. I can't believe anyone who put money in at the time reasonably expected any return.

 

[drew]

Well they are now, which begs the question do they have the club in their best interests as we are so often told or is it really the wallet first.

 

[Babylon]

Well Gary is only a shareholder and not on the board, so he won't even know what the bid consists of at the moment. Only board members know presently what that is.

 

[Foxes_Trust]

Well Gary is only a shareholder and not on the board, so he won't even know what the bid consists of at the moment. Only board members know presently what that is.

Some shareholders have been sounded out, however based on the GL article we don't think he was one of them, at least at the time of writing, as there are a couple of things he wouldn't have written.

To confirm, we are fully aware as our Observer attended both board meetings this week.